Study: Marion County's teen birth rate twice state average

A National Teen Pregnancy Awareness event in Times Square in 2011 meant to educate teens on the issue. Marion County's teen birth rate was twice the state average, according to a recently released study.(Photo: Jason Kempin, Getty Images)

MARION - A recent study highlighted health challenges facing Marion County residents, including a teen birth rate of nearly twice the state average.

That county's rate was 49 births per 1,000 females who were between the ages of 15 and 19. The study used data from 2011 to 2017 to come up with that average.

"When you have a higher teen birth rate you tend to also have a higher rate of sexually transmitted infections," said Marion Health Commissioner Traci Kinsler. "But, it also plays into those social and economic factors such as children in poverty."

In Ohio, Marion's overall ranking for health outcomes was 76 out of 88 counties. When it came to health factors for residents, it was ranked 85 in the state. Last year the county nabbed the second to last spot in that category.

Neighboring Delaware County was ranked the healthiest in the state and Adams County in southern Ohio was ranked the worst. Overall, Marion compared closer to counties on the state's southern border than those in central Ohio.

The number of newly diagnosed chlamydia cases in the county was 495.8 per a population of 100,000, using data collected in 2016. That number increased by 39 compared to the previous year.

The childhood poverty rate in the county was 24 percent, which was four percentage points higher than the state average.

"(Researchers say) a lot of that data (relating to teen pregnancy, education rates and child poverty) are tied together," Kinsler said. "So from a public health perspective we need to start implementing programming that we have not had before."

She said teen pregnancy has not traditionally been a program area at the local health department.

"The first thing, and the county health rankings highlights this, is no one agency can do it alone," Kinsler said. "It is going to take maybe starting a coalition around reproductive health where we can pull in the schools, maybe pull in local physicians, who may be a girls first contact once they are sexually active."

"Once we have a coalition established then maybe we can make better ground at getting kids educated earlier and (also figure out) how we can partner with the schools to better provide that education," she added.

Other issues

One of the goals of the study is to show how social determinants of health impact communities and how that pertains to premature death, members of Marion Public Health told The Star earlier this week.

"What that means is the loss of life that you sustained before the average age of life expectancy," Kinsler said. "We would expect people to live to 75 and 10,000 people in Marion did not make it (to that age)."

"That would have been from 2015 to 2017. What they are trying to answer is why," she added. "Generally those premature deaths would have been preventable."

The county has declined in rankings over the past few years, prompting health officials to dig deeper into the data.

A five-year community health improvement plan created in 2016 aimed at focusing on the top issues affecting the community, including housing, obesity, substance abuse, tobacco use and child health.

According to data collected in 2016, the county health rankings this year showed that 25 percent of Marion residents smoked. Data from 2015, showed that adult obesity was 39 percent.

Both those numbers were above the state average, which was 23 percent for tobacco use and 32 percent for obesity.

However, Kinsler said due to the nature of the study, progress made in the county is not immediately reflected in the rankings.

"The strategies that we have been working on in the last few years are not going to show up in these kind of rankings for at least another 5 years," she said.

The county also uses money through a Creating Healthy Communities grant to tackle obesity and physical inactivity. There has been slight progress relating to the latter.

The number of adults in the county age 20 and older that reported no leisure-time physical activity decreased by 2 percent compared to last year's health ranking. The study reported 31 percent of adults not being physically active in leisure time, compared to a state average of 25 percent.

Other topics discussed in the study included the number of physicians available in each county. In Marion, there was one primary care physician for every 2,710 residents. The state average was one for every 1,300 residents.

The study also ranked Marion 62 in terms of social and economic factors such as education and employment.